The Alumni Professional's Guide to the New LinkedIn Groups

How will the new changes to LinkedIn Groups affect you? We’ve got you covered.

They say the only thing constant in this life is change. That goes double for the world of social media.

This coming Wednesday, LinkedIn is rolling out . Seriously — these changes are pretty huge.

How will these affect alumni outreach programs that use Groups to engage alumni? We’ve rounded up a few of the most significant of the changes to keep you up-to-date on what you need to know.

Read on for the good, the bad, and the “time will tell.”

1. Group Settings

What Changed:

They’ve boiled down the LinkedIn Group Settings to 2 simple categories: . Additionally, all Groups will now be private and members-only.

What It Means for You:

The main difference is discoverability — Standard Groups will be shown on members’ profile pages and can be found by any LinkedIn member, while Unlisted Groups cannot be found through search. The only way for new members to join an Unlisted Group is if the owner of the group adds them.

If your group is currently public and free to join, it will become a Standard Group.

Here’s where it gets tricky for alumni groups specifically:

2. Member Approval

What Changed:

Members can now approve membership requests from their connections. Group owners and managers can still approve requests as well.

What It Means for You:

This one’s a double-edged sword.

For large groups, this may prove beneficial, relieving some of the managers’ burden of approving a high volume of requests. On the other hand, Group manager that check every membership request against their alumni database will lose this important step in the verification process.

There may be a workaround that involves syncing with Unlisted Groups, allowing moderators to use the searchable, promotable Page as a gateway to the verified, exclusive Group. We’ll update this post as soon as we hear which way LinkedIn decides to go on this.

3. Group Content

What Changed:

New posts will skip the manager approval process and be posted directly to the main group feed.

What It Means for You:

This set off alarm bells for us at first. Unfiltered content? No gatekeeper?!

Don’t worry — LinkedIn thought of that. Along with lifting the moderation of new posts, LinkedIn is also beefing up their content filters to better protect conversation feeds from spammy content. If group moderators do notice something off-topic slip through, they’ll be able to remove it same as before — it just won’t be caught in a moderation queue first for review.

For the most part, this should prove to be a welcome change. Less manual moderation of spam is always a good thing, and timely content is the stuff highly engaged groups are made of.

4. Promotions Tab

What Changed:

What It Means for You:

Yup. Gone. Most people were steering clear of Spam Promotions tab anyway, so this is no great loss.

5. Subgroups

What Changed:

Also gone — the concept, not the actual groups. All subgroups will be converted to independent groups.

What It Means for You:

This may prove tricky for organizations that used Subgroups to direct members to their local alumni chapters. LinkedIn suggests linking to the Subgroups in the About page of the parent group. You can edit this description under Manage tab > Group Information > Description.

6. Group Conversations

What Changed:

Group members can now post images and tag other group members in conversations.

What It Means for You:

It’s about freakin’ time. This will make posts more engaging and organized. Being able to converse with group members one-on-one on the feed will also help alleviate some of the fall out from the limit LinkedIn placed earlier this summer on how many messages you can send to fellow group members (no more than 15 per month). Well done, LinkedIn!

7. Mobile App

What Changed:

LinkedIn is launching a standalone iOS app just for the Groups experience.

What It Means for You:

More engagement! The app will showcase Group highlights, encourage discussion, and help people discover new Groups to join. The app officially launches October 14, but if you just can’t wait another day.